Adrian Symphony celebrates Oscar with pops concert

There are all sorts of ways to create a concert of music associated with Academy Award-winning movies.

The “Best Soundtrack” winners would be obvious choices, of course. In a lot of cases, so would the “Best Picture” winners.

But if you’re wracking your brain to think of what Oscar “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” won to warrant its inclusion in the Adrian Symphony Orchestra’s “A Night at the Oscars” pops concert this weekend, well, that would be Best Achievement in Makeup.

And so, while each of the movies represented does indeed share the commonality of having at least one Oscar win to its name, that golden statuette wasn’t necessarily awarded for the music itself, or even for the movie overall. But all the music together represents a cross-section of some 50 years of the silver screen.

“I tried to think of how to make a night out for couples and families, kids and grandparents. So the music spans generations,” said ASO Music Director John Thomas Dodson.

It all led to a huge variety of films being represented, including “Gone With the Wind,” “Love Story,” “Summer of ’42,” “Apollo 13,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Gladiator,” “Pocahontas,” “The Lion King,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Batman: The Dark Knight,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Star Wars,” and many more.

“It’s an unusual list,” Dodson acknowledged. “But I wanted it to have variety.”

The concert is at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, at Adrian College’s Dawson Auditorium. Tickets are $29, $26 and $18 for adults; $27, $24 and $18 for senior citizens; and $15 and $12 for students, and are available by calling the ASO at 264-3121; at the symphony’s offices near Dawson Auditorium; online at www.adriansymphony.org; or at the door.

An open rehearsal will be held Friday, Feb. 21, beginning at 7 p.m. to give people the opportunity to see first-hand how a portion of a typical ASO rehearsal comes together. There is no charge for the rehearsal, but those interested in attending should call the ASO to sign up.

Saturday’s concert includes a “red carpet” at Dawson and other elements in the concert hall designed to make the evening fun for ticketholders, whom Dodson said “can glam it up” in all their red-carpet finery for the full Oscar-night effect if they wish. The evening concludes with a complimentary post-concert reception to continue the awards-show feel.

The concert, which will be narrated by Adrian’s Erin Satchell Yuen, features four singers: Michael Lackey, Stephanie Jass, Stephanie Stefan and Adam Smith. When he approached them to participate, Dodson asked each to come up with a “wish list” of music they would like to sing, and to his surprise they all included Walt Disney music on their lists.

“You don’t think of Disney and the Academy Awards as going together,” he said, and yet all the films so represented, like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas,” did indeed win Oscars.

To Dodson, one of the striking things about the program is the sheer musical variety represented.

The sweeping music penned by classical composer Richard Strauss that became the iconic theme to “2001: A Space Odyssey” shares the program with the jaunty, sea-chantey style of “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“Pirates,” in turn, is a world away from the brooding music of “Batman: The Dark Knight,” which Dodson described as “sort of like Ralph Vaughan Williams in a depression.”

And then there’s “Apollo 13,” for which composer James Horner wrote music Dodson called “very pure, very American, very noble music. It sounds like Aaron Copland walked into the room,” on the same program as the Austrian composer Max Steiner, who wrote the music for “Gone With the Wind,” which many people hold to be one of the greatest soundtracks ever written.

“I love it that we have some of the truly great film music writers in this,” Dodson said. Besides composers like Steiner and Horner, there’s John Williams, without whom no program of movie music would be complete, and Hans Zimmer, whose music for “The Dark Knight” “is just unbelievable.”

Not surprisingly, coming up with a list of music from Oscar-winning movies was fairly easy, but the hard part was whittling it down. “I could have done a week’s worth of concerts,” Dodson said, laughing.

But he thinks the end result is a program for moviegoers across generations and lovers of just about any genre, from love stories to action/adventure, from animated to sci-fi/fantasy.

“I wanted to include iconic titles that people will know,” he said, “and to have titles that will appeal to a wide range of people. I think it’ll be a lovely night at the symphony.”